Vanishingly small today in the subway passengers with books in hand. But everywhere gadgets – mobile phones, tablets, iPods Rustle... "real", not electronic books have changed the music from the headphones, the signals of smartphones, tapping fingers on the keys. Wi-Fi in the Moscow metro – the most eloquent testimony of the change of epochs: from book to digital.
Remember the fairy tale of G. H. Andersen's "the Galoshes of happiness," about the Advisor Knape, twisting up in the hallway of their galoshes with magic and unwittingly find themselves in the middle Ages? And so we quietly turned in a new era – the era of the Internet, thicken time, speeding up our lives and changed our language.
Displace whether Wikipedia Dahl?
"The dictionary is the universe in alphabetical order", wrote Voltaire. We pack the acquired knowledge in the dictionary and commit them to following generations. It's like a capsule to the future with messages about our lives and hope to read and understanding we have today.
But in dictionaries there are practical, utilitarian function. We leaf through when you need to understand new or unfamiliar words, to correctly write and correctly pronounce the desired phrase to find synonyms and to learn about the origin of words. Encyclopedic, monolingual, word-formation dictionaries, dictionaries of synonyms, antonyms, paronyms, new and borrowed words, spelling and pronouncing, etymological and phraseological... only One list of available dictionaries is itself admirable, how much we know about our world and how rich our native language!
When I was in graduate school, my supervisor, Professor V. P. vomperskii, was in charge of the Department of history of the Russian language Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences, told us about how he made academic dictionaries in pre-revolutionary Russia. It was a serious, painstaking and slow work. To turn any word in the dictionary of the future, academics have sent letters to known scientists, public figures, writers, and collected their opinions about that word. Then it discussed, even argued. In such agony and was born the record.
Separate science – reading dictionaries. Now I explain to my students that there are different principles of their compilation: breeding, when the article "accumulate" related words, and alphabetical when words are arranged alphabetically. Explain how to decode vocabulary notes: m. – masculine, -a – word ending in R. p. Reading the dictionary difficult.
Easy to read, flipping to find the right words for a long time, and a lot of places in the bookcase is. The cult and culture of the dictionaries a thing of the past. Today all the words in our computer available in one click. The Internet is a library that is always at hand. Convenient, fast and easy. It is easy to be literate in the Internet age! Google us at any time will help. Wikipedia will explain everything. Only all is not gold that glitters.
No, I'm not against the Wiki-dictionary, I use it. But don't trust. The biggest problem of the Internet age is the loss of authority and dilution of authorship. Who we orientirueshsya looking for instant search results? And if we ask ourselves the question: what is the response believable?
Wikipedia – a true symbol of the Internet era. The authors are not scientists and not experts. Authors no. The people's encyclopedia is not liable for its proposed interpretation. Wikipedia is akin to folklore: everyone can "sing" an article in his own way, someone better, someone worse. Is there a time these scientists every time to verify and rectify never-ending text? And can we trust these texts?
As in a fairy tale: "Pot, cook!", even scary is – not flood if the Wikipedia culture? We got a massive dictionary to the mass consciousness. But the media culture is still culture.
Internet era yet only raises questions. And these issues should start to resolve.
Down with punctuation to ship today
At the XIII Congress of MAPRYAL in Granada, which took place in September 2015, a separate section was devoted to the language of the Internet. One of the most respected Moscow professors made a very original presentation on the role of a comma in SMS and online communication. As to switch the registers in our gadgets to put the right sign uncomfortable, then good would a comma be abolished, and leave only the point: the point as the point (at the end) and a dot instead of a comma. Like this, including technological feasibility of the reform of the punctuation, "modern" perspective on "outdated" system of writing.
The pathos of the speech was not directed against whole language. The revolution were asked to perform only in a particular sphere of communication – the Internet. But all that is now hitting the Internet, tomorrow will be universal and compulsory. We all live in the Internet era and adapting under its laws.
If the Professor had proposed to abolish the comma, the students overturned and point. And, moreover, not out of laziness, and not because of modern technology. And high stylistic principles. All, it turns out, explains the psychology of communication. Point, in their opinion, is a tough sign. And at the end of the message our youth puts only if is very angry. Formed a new communicative code of the Internet.
One of my students said he deliberately does not use punctuation in communicating with friends. This is a special taste of freedom. But in official correspondence all try to follow the rules. It's like a costume for the gala evening and jeans for a walk in the woods.
And this is the masters, future and established journalists, for whom language is a working tool that always needs to be honed, cleaned and debugged. What to speak of others? Will we have to accept the fact that one segment of our language, in a friendly, informal communication will be a game without rules or unwritten rules? And this is another question raised by the Internet era.
On the threshold of a new literacy
It seems that only recently linguists fought fiercely with the craze on the Internet "language padonkaff". Although there has been speculation that this virus was launched by linguists: to write words upside down, you need to know how they are spelled correctly. The linguistic joke has spawned a fashion for ignorance. Well, any fashion because fashion that is fleeting. And today "the author is cool", "author drink yadu", "laughing out loud" and other "pearls" of this variant of language is already an atavism. They remain as tokens of the era of the "original Internet" and as an incident in the history of the Russian language.
But were replaced by other Hobbies, new fashion. The Internet, like any revolution, full of experiments, including in the area of language.
I had to write that in the rebuilding in the Newspapers was a popular custom, occasional, i.e., "random", method of word formation: contraction of the phrase with multiple hyphens: "the man from the street", "country-which-no" etc. "Tom thumb" tale "spread" the language of Newspapers.
Today the name of another fabulous heroine becomes an example for the derivation on the Internet. Remember Pippi Longstocking? Longstocking is also a contraction of the phrase into one word. And such an unusual word noteworthy and well remembered. It figuratively, although it is not a metaphor. It succinctly and loudly. Not by chance in the contest "word of the year", conducted in 2014 among Internet users, the top three beat out "krymnash".
Such Internet speech can have an impact on the overall culture of speech and become harbingers of the new Internet literacy. Look at the hashtags: #cupiuba (call Volgograd youth to support grandmothers, selling products from your own garden), #jemmott (Crimeans really waiting for him), etc. Because such hashtags most other created occasional way. Their occasionalist and "disposability" has not prevented them to securely log in to Internet language and take their place.
Helpful spell check is more dangerous than the enemy
The unbridled speed of our Internet communication reduces distance, increases the required time. We have no time to think about the correctness of speech, we need to send a message. And the Internet offers the helpful aid of spell check. After a point, a small letter she will grow to large. It is doubtful the written word will be underlined in red as if to signal: "Fix me!". Convenient. You can not be distracted by grammar and indulge in the free flight of thought. The spell check even he appends to the words.
My sophomores are so used to the fact that the auto-corrector works for her, that left my brother a note: "Give me key" and was very surprised when her favorite cat was left hungry, because the brother did not understand that the note was a request "to give the pussy meat." The Internet allows negligence. He autocivil carefully to register your thoughts, thereby simplifying not only speech, but also our minds.
I disabled the spell check in your tablet. Wrote to a friend: "Nadya, I'll see you tomorrow". "Tomorrow," Hope looked at me, frowning. In her tablet, my letter began: "a nest of vipers, ..."
The Internet is, probably, forever. We need to learn to live with it, to use it and not to destroy our culture and our language.